US mom in Brazil: Custody dispute stranded me

BOSTON (AP) — Police in Brazil have seized passports belonging to a woman and her 6-year-old daughter, stranding them in South America for about a month amid an international custody dispute with the child’s father.

Thirty-three-year-old Shauna Hadden and her daughter, Ava Machado, have been in Brazil since late May, when they began a trip Hadden said was intended to connect the girl with the father she hadn’t seen in more than three years.

Hadden’s mother, Linda, said Friday the pair had already arrived in Rio de Janeiro on her way to visit Ava’s father, 32-year-old Donizete Machado, when her daughter received a phone call from a mutual friend warning her that Machado planned to keep the girl.

Instead of taking a flight to southern Brazil to meet Machado, Shauna Hadden and her daughter flew north to stay with friends in the northeastern city of Fortaleza, Linda Hadden said.

Then federal police seized Shauna Hadden’s passport along with her daughter’s in early June.

On Friday, a lawyer for Machado confirmed the passports were confiscated following a request by the girl’s father but denied he wants custody of the girl, whom Hadden has had full custody of since the couple split in 2009.

Attorney Isabel Feijo said Machado sought seizure of their passports because Hadden skipped his scheduled meeting with Ava.

“He wants her to visit him and his family, and if the mother agrees to that, the request to seize the passport will immediately be withdrawn, we’ll drop the case,” Feijo said Friday.

Feijo said Hadden — using tickets purchased by her ex-husband — arrived in Rio de Janeiro on May 21 and was supposed to meet Machado in the city of Florianopolis before traveling together to the town of Criciuma, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) to the southeast.

When Hadden and her daughter failed to show, Feijo filed court papers on May 27 asking for their passports to be seized.

In court filings, Feijo alleged Hadden never intended to allow her daughter to see Machado and instead used the tickets to meet an online boyfriend.

Hadden’s family called that claim ridiculous, but in an exchange of Facebook messages from April 16 — five weeks before her trip — Hadden voices an intention to visit the man named in the passport seizure request, a resident of the town where she’s now staying.

Hadden’s mother said she believes her daughter intended to visit her ex-husband because they had purchased gifts for his nieces and nephews that Shauna Hadden took with her. Linda Hadden said it’s possible her daughter is dating the other man but he wasn’t the sole reason for her trip.

Machado, who works as a house painter, had been expelled from the U.S. because he entered the country illegally through Mexico, his attorney confirmed.

Rafaela Santos Martins da Rosa, the federal judge overseeing the case, said she couldn’t provide details because the case involves a minor and falls under secrecy laws. Brazil’s federal police declined to comment. The U.S. Embassy in Brasilia would confirm only that Hadden is in Fortaleza and is receiving consular services.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Richard Neal, both of Massachusetts, say they’ve been trying to intervene in an effort to get mother and daughter back to the United States.

It’s common in Brazil for officials to confiscate the passports of parents if a judge feels there is a chance that a mother or father may try to take a child out of the country without the other parent’s permission.

This is not the first time that parents from Brazil and the United States have become embroiled in a custody dispute attracting international attention.

In 2009, a five-year custody battle involving a boy with family in New Jersey and Brazil ended with the 9-year-old Sean Goldman’s return to the United States with his father David Goldman.

The case had pitted David Goldman against his son’s Brazilian stepfather, who had cared for the boy after his mother died in childbirth. The boy’s mother had brought him to her native Brazil for what was supposed to be a vacation, but she stayed before divorcing her son’s father and remarrying. The boy’s stepfather had temporary custody of him, before the conclusion of a case that strained relations between Brazil and the United States.

When the boy’s handover was blocked shortly before the custody dispute ended, the U.S. Senate put a hold on a trade deal worth about $2.75 billion a year to Brazil. The dispute prompted high-level discussions involving President Barack Obama and his then-counterpart, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Shauna Hadden has a Facebook page called “Trapped in Brazil” that she is updating as she waits for the case to be resolved.

In an email to The Associated Press on Friday, she said she and her daughter are stressed and want to come home.